(December 1887)
Publications:
- Lucifer, vol. 1, no. 4, December 1887, pp. 288-291
- Lucifer, vol. 1, no. 5, January 1888, pp. 375-378
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Title for references: Scott-Elliot W. - The Great Quest
Short description:
December 1887 (pp. 288-291)
288
THE GREAT QUEST.
“In many mortal forms I rashly sought |
| – Shelley. |
“Après l’amour éteint si je vécus encore |
| – Lamartine. |
The loss of youth and love is the perpetual wail of the poets. A never-changing spring-time of life, where the sweet dreams of youth would be realised in the fruition of reciprocal love, such would be a heaven to them, and such is a heaven while it lasts. If we add to this the refined æsthetic taste that can delicately balance and appreciate to a nicety every joy of the senses, and the highly-developed intellect which can roam at will over the accumulated store of past ages of culture, what would there be left for poets to dream of? With heart, senses and mind worthily employed, and with the well-balanced nature that knows moderation alone can give continued bliss, could not man rest satisfied at last? What more could he desire?
It is useless to deny that life has very sweet gifts to give, though the number is limited of those who are capable of receiving them in their fulness. But even while these gifts are being enjoyed, it is felt that the horizon is bounded. With what questioning uncertainty – albeit with fascination – does youth open its eyes upon the glamour of the dazzling world! The love of the Springtide, even in fruition, is continually building fairy bowers in the future – it never for long rests content in the present, while to the intellect the bounded scope of utmost learning is a still more definite goad towards a knowledge that shall transcend all past experience.
And even were man content to continue to drink of the one cup of bliss, he is never allowed to do so. The lessons of life, the great teacher, are continually being altered, and the tempest of the heart takes the place of the calm that was never expected to end.
If, then, we must look in vain to find permanent bliss in any of these things – if, beyond the highest intellectual culture of an intellectual age there gleams the vision of a higher knowledge – if behind the artistic refinement of this, as of all past flowers of civilization, the fount of all sweetness lies hid – if even the heart-binding communion of earthly love is but a faint reflex of the deep peace realized by him who has torn aside the veil that hides the Eternal, surely all man’s energies should be devoted to the quest which will yield him such results.
The whole philosophy of life may be summed up in the Four great Truths that Buddha taught, and no more convincing description of them 289 can be read than that given in the lovely lines of the eighth book of the “Light of Asia.”
He who has once been deeply imbued with these great truths – who has realised the transitory nature of all earthly bliss, and the pains and sorrows that more than counterbalance the joys of life – will never in his truest moments desire to be again blessed, either in the present or in any future incarnation, with an uniformly happy life, for there is no such soporific for the soul as the feeling of satisfaction, as there is no such powerful goad as the feeling of dissatisfaction. He is bound to pass through periods of joy, but they will be looked forward to with fear and doubting, for then it is that the sense-world again fastens its fangs on the soul, to be followed by the pain of another struggle for freedom.
When first setting out on the great quest, it seems as if many lifetimes would fail to appease the dominant passion of the soul, but nature works quickly in the hottest climates, and from the very intensity of the desire may spring the strength and will to conquer it. Though it is probably the same key-note that is struck throughout, the dominant desire will appear to take a different tone through the ascending scale of life. It is a speculation, but one which would seem to receive endorsement from the analogies of nature; for as the human embryo in its antenatal development, exhibits in rapid succession, but with longer pauses as it approaches the period of birth, the characteristics of the lower races of animal life from which man has evolved, so does the human soul realise in its passage through life the dominant desires and attractions which have affected it through countless past incarnations. The lower desires which in past lives may have been more or less completely conquered, will be experienced in rapid succession and left behind without much difficulty, till the great struggle of the life is reached, from which man must come out more or less victorious if he is to continue the progress at all.
If right intention were the only thing needed, if it were a guarantee against being led astray, or if straying did not necessitate retardation on the road, there would be no such supreme necessity that belief should be in accordance with facts; but even in worldly affairs we see every day that purity of intention is no guard against the failures that come from lack of knowledge. In the great spiritual science therefore, which deals with the problem of life as a whole – not the mere fragment which this earthly existence represents – it will be seen how vitally necessary it is that facts should be conceived correctly.
To us whose eyes are blinded to the heights above, by the mists of our own desires, the only rays of light which can illumine the darkness of our journey on the great quest, are the words (whether or not in the form of recognised revelation) left by the masters who have preceded us on the road, and the counsel of our comrades who are bound for the 290 same goal. But words are capable of many interpretations, and the opinions of our comrades are coloured by their own personality – the ultimate touch-stone of truth must therefore be looked for in the disciple’s own breast.
Having stated the necessity for correct belief, let us now consider the question of the great achievement – the annihilation of Karma – the attainment of Nirvana. It must be acknowledged as a logical proposition that Karma can never annihilate Karma, i.e., that no thoughts words, or acts of the man in his present state of consciousness, can, ever free him from the circle of re-births. This view would seem to necessitate some power external to the man to free him – a power which has touch of him, and which would have to be allied to him.
Now the teachings which have been put before the world in “Light on the Path” state the other side of the question. “Each man is to himself absolutely the way, the truth, and the life.” And again, “For within you is the light of the world, the only light that can be shed on the Path. If you are unable to perceive it within you, it is useless to look for it elsewhere.” It would seem that the solution of this great paradox must be sought for in the constitution of man, as described in theosophic writings. Indeed, it is the scientific statement of deep spiritual truths which gives to the Theosophic teachings their remarkable value, and which seems likely to carry conviction of their truth to the Western peoples, who have for too long been accustomed to the mere emotional sentimentality of the orthodox religions, and to the pessimistic negation of science.
The higher principles, as they have been called, in the constitution of man, particularly the divine Atma, through which he is allied to the all-pervading Deity, must ever remain deep mysteries. But at least they are cognisable by the intellect, as providing logical stepping-stones for spanning the great gulf between Humanity and Divinity, – the Power – the correct cognition of which provides the very link between both systems of thought – which is at the same time external to man, and has touch of him by its own divine light which enlightens him, and which is also the very man himself – his highest and truest Self.
For most of us it is the “God hidden in the Sanctuary,” of whose very existence we are unaware, is known under the name of Iswara or the Logos – the primal ray from the Great Unknown. It is the Chrestos of the Christians, but, save, perhaps, to a few mystics in the Roman or Greek churches, it has been degraded past recognition by their materialistic anthropomorphism. A help to its better understanding may be obtained by a reference to Sanscrit philosophy, which describes man’s nature as consisting of the three gunas or qualities – Satwa, goodness, Rajas, passion and Tamas, darkness, or delusion – and the nature of most men is made up almost entirely of the two last named – while the Logos is pure Satwa.
291 The vexed question, therefore, as to whether man is freed by his own dominant will, or by the power of the Logos, will be seen to be very much a distinction without a difference. For the attainment of final liberation the God within and the God without must co-operate.
Desire being, as Buddha taught, the great obstacle in the way, its conquest by the dominant will is the thing that has to be done, but the Divine will cannot arise in its power, till the conviction of the Supreme desirability of attaining the eternal condition is rendered permanent; and it is this that necessitates the goad which the Logos is continually applying by its light on the soul.
We are now face to face with a very difficult problem – it is, in fact the gulf which separates the Occultist from the Religionist, and it is here that it is so necessary to get hold of the correct idea.
“Strong limbs may dare the rugged road which storms, |
The short cut to perfection referred to in the first two lines has been called in Theosophic writings “the perilous ladder which leads to the path of life.” To have faced the fearful abyss of darkness of the first trial, without starting back in terror at the apparent annihilation which the casting aside of the sense-life implies, and out of the still more awful silence of the second trial; to have had the strength to evoke the greater Self – the God that has hitherto been hidden in the sanctuary – such is the language used with reference to the very first – nay, the preliminary – steps on this path, while the further steps are represented by the ascending scale of the occult Hierarchy, where the neophyte or chela, through a series of trials and initiations, may attain the highest Adeptship, and the man may gradually leave behind him his human desires and limitations, and realise instead the attributes of Deity.
January 1888 (pp. 375-378)
375
THE GREAT QUEST.
The Religionist, of course, denies that man can become a god or ever realise in himself the attributes of Deity. He may recognise the necessity of re-incarnation for ordinary worldly men, and even for those who are not constant in their detachment and devotion, but he denies the necessity for that series of trials and initiations which must cover, at all events, more than one life-time – probably many. It would appear as if the theory of evolution might be called in, to aid this latter view. If it is acknowledged that we, as individuals, have been for ever whirling on the wheel of conditioned existence; if at the beginning of each manwantara the divine monad which through the beginningless past has inhabited in succession the vegetable, animal, and human forms, takes to itself a house of flesh in exact accordance with previous Karma, it will be seen that (while inhabiting a human body) during no moment in the past eternity have we been nearer the attainment of Nirvana than at any other. If then there is no thinkable connection between evolution and Nirvana, to imagine that evolution, through stages of Adeptship, conducts to Nirvana, is a delusion. “It is purely a question of divine grace” – says the Religionist. If in answer to this view, it is contended that the light of the Logos is bound, eventually, to reach and enlighten every individual, and that the steady progress to perfection through Chelaship and Adeptship would, therefore, be a logical conclusion, it is objected that to assert that the light of the Logos must eventually reach and enlighten all, would involve the ultimate extinction of the objective Universe, which is admitted to be without beginning or end, although it passes through alternate periods of manifestation and non-manifestation. If to escape from this untenable position we postulate fresh emanations of Deity into the lowest organisms at the beginning of each manwantara, to take the place of those who pass away into Nirvana, we are met by other difficulties. Firstly, putting out of consideration the fact that such a supposition is expressly denied by what is acknowledged as revelation, the projection into the evolutionary process of a monad free from all Karma, makes the law of Karma inoperative, for the monad’s first association with Karma remains unexplained; and also it becomes impossible to say what the monad was, and what was the mode of its being prior to the projection into evolution. It must be noted that although the law of Karma does not explain why we are, yet it satisfactorily shows how we are what we are; and this is the raison d’être of the law. But the above theory takes away its occupation. It makes Karma and the monad independent realities, joined together by the 376 creative energy of the Deity, while Karma ought to be regarded as a mode of existence of the monad – which mode ceases to be when another mode, called liberation, takes its place. Secondly, if the monad in attaining liberation only attains to what it was before its association with Karma, à quoi bon the whole process; while, if it is stated that the monad was altogether non-existent before its projection, the Deity becomes responsible for all our sufferings and sins, and we fall into either the Calvinist doctrine of predestination as popularly conceived, or into the still more blasphemous doctrine of the worshippers of Ahriman, besides incurring many logical difficulties. The teaching of our eastern philosophers is that the real interior nature of the monad is the same as the real interior essence of the Godhead, but from beginningless past time it has a transitory nature, considered illusive, and the mode in which this illusion works is known by the name of Karma.
But were we not led astray in the first instance? Ought we not to have acquiesced in the first above given definition of the theory of evolution? The premiss was satisfactory enough – the mistake was in allowing the religionist’s deduction as a logical necessity. When the religionist states that there is no thinkable connection between evolution and Nirvana, he merely postulates for the word evolution a more limited scope than that which the Occultist attaches to it, viz., the development of soul as well as that of mere form. He is indeed right in stating that the natural man, while he remains such, will never attain the ultimate goal of Being. True it is, for the Occultist as for the religionist, that, to free himself from the fatal circle of rebirths, he must “burst the shell which holds him in darkness – tear the veil that hides him from the eternal.” The religionist may call this the act of divine grace; but it may be quite as correctly described as the “awakening of the slumbering God within.” But the error of the religionist is surely in mistaking the first glimmer of the divine consciousness for a guarantee of final emancipation, at, say, the next death of the body, instead of merely the first step of a probationary stage in the long vista of work for Humanity on the higher planes of Being!
To provide ourselves with an analogy from the very theory of Evolution which we have been discussing, is it not more logical to imagine that, in the same way in which we see stretched at our feet the infinite gradations of existence, through the lower animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms – between which indeed, thanks to the recent investigations of scientific men – there is no longer recognised to be any distinct line of demarcation – so the heights (necessarily hidden from our view) which still remain to be scaled by us in our upward progress to Divinity, should be similarly filled with the gradations of the unseen hierarchy of Being? And that, as we have evolved during millions of 377 centuries of earth-life through these lower forms up to the position we now occupy, so may we, if we choose, start on a new and better road of progress, apart from the ordinary evolution of Humanity, but in which there must also be innumerable grades?
That there will be progress for Humanity as a whole, in the direction of greater spirituality, there is no doubt, but that progress will be partaken of by continually decreasing numbers. Whether the weeding out takes place at the middle of the “great fifth round,” or whether it be continually taking place during the evolutionary process, a ray of light is here thrown on the statement met with in all the Bibles of Humanity as to the great difficulty of the attainment. “For straight is the gate, and narrow is the way that leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it; but wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth unto destruction, and many there be that go in thereat.” This and parallel passages doubtless refer to the weeding out of those who are unfit to continue the progress, on which the more spiritualized Humanity will then have entered. The most vivid picture of the comparative handful of elect souls, who are fit to achieve the great quest, will be obtained by contemplating the fact already stated, that the objective universe, with its myriads of inhabitants, will never, in the vast abysses of the future, cease to be; and that the great majority of humanity – the millions of millions – will thus for ever whirl on the wheel of birth and death.
But though Nature may give us an almost infinite number of chances to attempt the great quest, it were madness to put by the chance offered now, and allow the old sense-attractions to regain their dominance, for it must be remembered that the barbarism and anarchy which every civilisation must eventually lapse into, are periods of spiritual deadness, and that it is when “the flower of civilisation has blown to its full, and when its petals are but slackly held together,” that the goad within men causes them to lift their eyes to the sunlit mountains, and “to recognise in the bewildering glitter the outlines of the Gates of Gold.”
There are no doubt realms in the Devaloka where the bliss of heaven may be realised by those who aspire to the selfish rewards of personal satisfaction, but these cease to exist with the end of the manwantara, and with the beginning of the next the devotee will again have to endure incarceration in flesh. The eighth chapter of the Bhagavad Gita does indeed state that there is a path to Nirvana through the Devaloka, and amongst the countless possibilities of the Infinite who shall assert that this is not so? but the context surely implies such a detachment and devotion through life as is difficult for us even to contemplate, much less to realize.
However distant, therefore, may appear to us the achievement of the great quest, when we consider how much more closely we are allied to the animal than to the God, it must necessarily seem an infinitely far-off goal, but though we may have to pass through many life-times before we 378 reach it, our most earnest prayer should be, that we may never lose sight of that celestial goal, for surely it is the one thing worthy of achievement!
To many the foregoing may appear as mere speculations, and the firmest faith indeed can scarcely call itself knowledge, but, however necessary the complete knowledge may be, we may at least hope that its partial possession is adequate to the requirements of the occasion. To us whose feet tread, often wearily, towards the path of the great quest, and whose eyes strain blindly through the mists that wrap us round, steady perseverance and omnipotent hope must be the watch-words – perseverance to struggle on, though the fiends of the lower self may make every step a battle, and hope that at any moment the entrance to the path may be found.
As an example of these two qualities, and also because all words that strike a high key are bound to awaken responsive echoes in noble hearts, let us conclude with the following extract from the Ramayana: –
“Thus spoke Rama. Virtue is a service man owes himself, and though there were no heaven nor any God to rule the world, it were not less the binding law of life. It is man’s privilege to know the right and follow it. Betray and persecute me brother men! Pour out your rage on me O malignant devils! Smile, or watch my agony in cold disdain ye blissful Gods! Earth, hell, heaven combine your might to crush me – I will still hold fast by this inheritance! My strength is nothing – time can shake and cripple it; my youth is transient – already grief has withered up my days; my heart – alas! it is well-nigh broken now. Anguish may crush it utterly, and life may fail; but even so my soul that has not tripped shall triumph, and dying, give the lie to soulless destiny that dares to boast itself man’s master.”
Footnotes